learn / 5 books to inspire

Shortcut through the bookshop to these 5 standouts for success. Tough to pick just 5 but these are some of our favourite works from our most loved thinkers and innovators.

Start Something That Matters — Blake Mycoskie

The inspiring story of the founding of TOMS and a book thats been a big inspiration to Form. Blake shares some of this thinking on social entrepreneurship and how combining giving and a big goal can make real positive change in the world.

Centred around finding your own true purpose and that which you would like to serve, Blake offers meaningful advice on how to make it happen and how exactly he did. Social entrepreneurship is a growing area and one of the most effective and sustainable methods of solving some of the world’s biggest problems. This book will start you off on the right track.

Influence. They Psychology of Persuasion — Robert Cialdini

The oldest book on the list, first being published in 1984, the distinguished Professor of Marketing takes you on a extremely readable journey though the world of marketing.

A fascinating insight on the tricks marketers employ on you and the psychology behind them. Identifying 6 key principles of persuasion Cialdini explains and then shows how you can turn these to your own advantage in whatever your own situation might be. Wondered why Tupperware Parties were invented and so successful? What makes one saleswoman more successful than the other? What your own heuristics and biases are? Buy this book to find out.

Blue Ocean Strategy — Kim and Mauborgne

An academic text that’s found the mainstream in the last couple of years. Kim and Maubourne advocate looking for the uncontested market spaces, ‘blue oceans’ as they call them.

Easier said than done but a masterclass in strategic thinking and differentiation. People tend to herd and follow trends, these spaces are highly competitive and represent a shrinking profit pool. Use this book for a framework and to learn how to think and identify the uncontested ‘blue oceans’.

Flow: The Psychology of Happiness: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

A great summary of Mihaly’s years of research, this was probably the first book to popularise the concept of Flow — ‘a state of concentration so focused that it amounts to complete absorption in an activity.’

Now a fairly widespread and often misused term this book gives a solid grounding in the research behind the topic as well as easy to access and implement tips on how you can achieve your own flow state.

Love him or hate him Elon is a visionary. This book for me sums up the power of thinking big, of setting goals and relentlessly pursuing them. Is it crazy to have a stated goal of colonising Mars? Not when you spawn Space X along the way to achieving it. Detractors talk about him missing goals (I’d like to see their goals!) but perhaps they are missing the point, perhaps the point is not so much the goal as a destination rather what’s achieved on the journey to it. A metaphor for life.